Forums

Welcome to the newly updated TrekEarth ForumsPlease note: If this is your first visit since the change, you will need to log out from the site and re-log in to verify your identity to the forum before you can post.

Taken from Frank Evers' post on Lightstalkers. I think this is fantastic news for VII! Richards is definately one of my favorite and most influencial photographers. I know Richards left Magnum some time ago, and was wondering where he'll go...it's good to know he's with the best agency in the world (atleast IMO). Who knows, maybe Salgado will join next! ;)

PRESS RELEASE – April 14th, 2006
The VII Photo Agency has successfully completed its third seminar (the West Coast VII Seminar), which was hosted by the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. This sold-out event featured an opening reception for The Democratic Republic of Congo: The Forgotten War (at the Stephen Cohen Gallery with photographs by James Nachtwey, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged and Gary Knight), a private screening of Lauren Greenfield’s new feature-length documentary film, THIN (an HBO production), panel discussions with special guests, presentations by the VII photographers and interviews of Lauren Greenfield and James Nachtwey by Alex Chadwick (host of NPR’s Day to Day).
Art Center’s Chairman of Photography, Dennis Keeley, called the event “one of the best things that has ever happened at Art Center. It was like a remarkable piece of history in the making”. Richard Koshalek, Art Center president, called it “a category 5 event”. The West Coast VII Seminar was supported by Apple Computers, Canon USA, Lowepro, Lexar, Digital Railroad and Art Center School of Design. The event was filmed and recorded and will be available for download from the VII website in mid-June, 2006. The next VII Seminar will take place in New York City in early 2007.
While in Pasadena, VII held its annual meeting with all of its members present. The members elected James Nachtwey to the position of President and a member of the board of directors. They also elected Joachim Ladefoged to the position of Vice President and a member of the board. Other board members elected were Antonin Kratochvil and Alexandra Boulat. Frank Evers will continue on as the Managing Director of VII.
In addition, the members are pleased to announce the admission of Eugene Richards to the VII Photo Agency. “The work of Eugene Richards is a cornerstone of contemporary documentary photography and filmmaking. All of us at VII welcome Eugene and look forward to his comradeship and creative spirit.”, says James Nachtwey, President of VII. “I am very pleased to be a part of this very creative group of people,” says Eugene Richards.
Eugene Richards was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. After graduating from Northeastern University with a degree in English and journalism, he studied photography with Minor White at M.I.T. In 1968 he joined VISTA and was assigned as a health care advocate to eastern Arkansas. Two years later he helped found a social service organization and a community newspaper, Many Voices, that reported on black political action and the Ku Klux Klan. After publication of his first two books, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta (1973) and his self-published Dorchester Days (1978), Richards was invited to become a member at Magnum.
Richards is best known for his books—he has authored thirteen—and photo essays on such diverse topics as breast cancer, drug addiction, poverty, emergency medicine, pediatric HIV and AIDS, the meat packing industry, the plight of the world’s mentally disabled, aging and death in America. His work has appeared in countless publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Esquire, TIME, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Fortune, Mother Jones and LIFE. Among numerous honors, he has won the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, the Olivier Rebbot Award twice, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged.
Richards has written, photographed, directed, and produced four short films, as well as one hour-long documentary. But, the day came, which chronicles the passage of a 92-year-old farmer into a nursing home, received the Jury Award for Best Short Film at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Richards’s latest books are Stepping Through the Ashes and The Fat Baby. Co-authored by Janine Altongy, Stepping Through the Ashes, an elegy to those who lost their lives in New York on September 11, 2001, received the Golden Light Book Award for best collaboration with a writer. The Fat Baby, an anthology of textual and photographic essays produced over the past dozen years, was chosen Best Book by Pictures of the Year International (POYi).
VII derives its name from the number of founding photojournalists who, in September 2001, formed this collectively owned agency. Designed from the outset to be an efficient, technologically enabled distribution hub for some of the world’s finest photojournalism, VII has been responsible for creating and relaying to the world many of the images that define the turbulent opening years of the 21st century.
Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey and John Stanmeyer were joined in 2002 by Lauren Greenfield, in 2004 by Joachim Ladefoged and in 2006 by Eugene Richards. Together they document conflict – environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent – to produce an unflinching record of the injustices created and experienced by people caught up in the events they describe.
For more information, please visit our website at www.VIIphoto.com , call Frank Evers at 310-259-8990 or email him at

Thanks Mark. I must tell you that looking at the website and 2 of the series, completely broke my heart. I was both in Pnom Penh, shooting the dancers of the khmer classical dancing institute, and at the demonstrations against Thaksin (I must have been pretty close to Nachtwey, recognizing some of the events!) in bangkok. Broke my heart, because my hard drive was stolen from my room, with all my trip shots, save a few on memory.

Nachtwey's series is not very powerful stuff, because it was not a true defining moment of thai modern history. i am sure he does not think much of it, and apparently, the PM is back in power, so that explains it, people were worked up because schools were out, but both sides were manipulated by politickers, of which Thailand has more than its share.

For the Pnom Penh dancers, the captions do not tell the story that needs to be told. let's forget about the khmers rouges charade, which serves troo juch for excusing any current ills 30 years after, the cambodian authorities do not give one damn either about Khmer classical dancing. the story that needs to be told is that teachers are owed backpay (20$ a month, you'd think easy to find it, when a police chief racks up 100 of 000$ in corrupted ways ), don't have the means to go to the school, that has been displaced way out in the fields, because it was in a great piece of real estate in the capital. I said it in the cambodia gallery, half of the classes could not be taught, lacking a teacher, and the rest had all students mixed up, in overcrowded classrooms.

I will be working on this subject again next year, as for the thai "revolution", who knows, with that PM back in power, I may also have a chance to shoot that again. We never miss a shot, it always comes again. Photo-journalism, and photography for that matter is half patience, half swiftly readiness....

Thanks again, mark. I find very inspiring to see the same subjects i approached on that site, and, my immodest claim, with a little insight they seemed not to have.

Richards does things with a wideangle that defy all conventions (I have the Cocaine book plus another). He stretches subjects right into the very edges of the frame - incredible daring and skill (hard to watch too sometimes!)
Thanks, Mark for updating us on his whereabouts - he is a true master.
All the best,
Francis

If you guys are in the area Sept. 17, 2006, I wanted to let you guys know about the VII seminar held in New York City. It will be at the Parsons School of Design and will give you a chance to hear the VII photographers talk about their work! You can get more information online at http://viiphoto.com/event.html if you guys are interested. I hope to see you all there!